We left Honfleur early and headed west along the Normandy coast. Out first stop was the Ranville War Cemetery. Ranville has the distinction of being the first French town liberated on D-Day as this is where a number of paratroopers landed in the early hours of June 6 1944. They were meant to land behind the German coastal defences.
I’m not going to delve into the history of what happened rather I am going to talk about what it is like now and what it is like to be here 80 years after the event. To put it bluntly it was confronting.
We walked around the cemetery looking at the various headstones - they were all British Commonwealth Troops. The average age would have been about 22, the oldest I saw was 37, all were either paratroopers or aircrew, there were two Australians here both aircrew. The sadest ones were the unknowns, someone’s family always wondering what happened to them.
There are German and other Axis troops buried here as well and they were younger as by this stage of the war all the experienced troops were fighting the Russians leaving the very young, the very old, or the previously wounded troops defending the Atlantic coast.
The Cathedral next door to the cemetery had bullet marks from the fighting.
Next stop was the Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux. It explained what the allies were aiming to achieve, how they did it and the massive amount of planning and logistics that went into D-Day. There were also a couple of tanks on display outside.
We stopped in the town of Bayeux for lunch. Most villages in Normandy were completely destroyed but luckily a local priest told the allies the Germans had pulled out of the town so it was not too badly damaged. We were meant to see the Bayeux Tapestry but unfortunately it is in the UK at the moment as its building is being renovated.
We then went on to Omaha Beach. It was low tide when we were there which it would have been before dawn on June 6 1944. Granted the coast may have changed over the last 80 years but there was still a huge distance the troops had to cover from the landing craft to the foot of the hills behind the beach - all the time being shot at or bombarded by artillery.
The American cemetery above Omaha Beach contains the graves of over 9,300 Americans and is huge. The huge number of white headstones plus the massive number of names on the wall with no known grave was very sad. I have attached a video to this post to try and convey the sheer number of graves.
There are a few Canadians on the tour so our next stop was Juno Beach. There are a few German bunkers still overlooking the beach which you can visit.
The scale of the landings was enormous. From Utah beach in the west to Sword Beach in the east is just over 80kms.
The last stop was at Arromanches. This is where they built the huge artificial harbour (called Port Winston) in the days after D-Day so the massive amount of material needed to keep the attack going could be provided and you can still see the remains of this port today. The British Memorial is here as it is close to Gold Beach.
All up it was an interesting day. Lots of history of course but the massive number of gravestones brings home the human aspect as well.
PerancisRanville49°13’52” N 0°15’28” W
PerancisRanville49°13’52” N 0°15’28” W